Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha

Building Stones: Lecture Eight

Schmidt Number: S-3362

On-line since: 31st August, 2008

LECTURE EIGHT

It is most important for the present age
and for the future of mankind to realize that our
understanding of Christ Jesus and the Mystery of Golgotha is
not dependent upon the findings of the external history that
is accepted as scientific today. In order to acquire a
knowledge of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha that carries
conviction and is susceptible of proof we must rather look to
other sources than those of contemporary historical
investigation, even when these sources are the Gospels
themselves. I have often stated, and anyone who refers to the
relevant literature can verify this for himself, that the
most diligent, assiduous and painstaking research has been
devoted to Gospel criticism or Gospel exegesis during the
nineteenth century. This Gospel criticism has yielded only
negative results; in fact it has served rather to destroy and
undermine our faith in the Mystery of Golgotha rather than to
confirm and substantiate it. We know that many people today,
not from a spirit of contradiction but because, on the
evidence of historical investigation they cannot do
otherwise, have come to the conclusion that there is no
justification on purely historical grounds for assigning the
existence of Christ Jesus to the beginning of our era. This
of course cannot be disproved, but that is of no
consequence.

I now propose
to discuss whether it is possible to discover other sources
than the historical sources which may contribute to an
understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Before answering
the question let us first examine a few facts of occult
history.

In tracing
the development of Christianity during the early centuries of
our era we must bear in mind that it is difficult to
comprehend this development unless we reinforce a purely
historical enquiry with the findings of Spiritual Science. If
we accept, purely hypothetically for the moment, the facts of
spiritual-scientific investigation into this period, then a
very remarkable picture unfolds before us. As we review this
development during the early centuries we realize in effect
that the Mystery of Golgotha has been fulfilled not only once
— as an isolated event on Golgotha — but, in a
figurative sense, a second time on the mighty panorama of
history. When we study this period truly remarkable things
are disclosed.

The Church of
Rome has a tradition of continuity that is reflected in its
Church history. This history describes the founding of
Christianity, the early Church Fathers, the post-Nicene
Fathers and the later Christian philosophers, and the
formulation of the particular dogmas by Councils and
infallible Popes and so on. History is seen as an unbroken
chain, a uniform pattern of unchanging character. It is true
that the early Church Fathers have been much criticized from
certain angles. But on the whole people are afraid to reject
them completely, for in that case the continuity would be
broken. History proper begins with the Council of
Constantinople in 869 of which I have already spoken. As I
have said, history is represented as an unbroken chain, a
continuous process. But if a radical gap is anywhere to be
found in an apparently continuous process, then it is here.
One can hardly imagine a greater contrast than the contrast
between the spirit of the early Church Fathers and that of
the post-Nicene Fathers and Conciliar decrees. There is a
radical difference which is equally radically concealed
because it is in the interest of the Church to conceal it.
For this reason it has been possible to keep the faithful
(today) in ignorance of what took place in the first
centuries of the Christian era. Today, for example, there is
no clear and reliable evidence, even from leading scholars,
of how the Gnosis came to be suppressed. We are equally in
the dark about the aims and intentions of such men as Clement
of Alexandria, his pupil Origen and others
(note 1),
including Tertullian, because such
fragmentary information as we possess is of doubtful
provenance and is derived for the most part from writings of
their opponents. For this reason, and because the most
fantastic theories have been built on this fragmentary
information, it is impossible to arrive at a reliable picture
of the early Church Fathers.

In order to
have a clear understanding of this problem we must turn our
attention for a moment to the causes of this indefiniteness,
to all that has happened so that the Mystery of Golgotha
could take place a second time in history.

At the time
of the Mystery of Golgotha the ancient pagan cults and
Mysteries were widespread. And they were of such importance
that a figure such as Julian the Apostate was initiated into
the Eleusinian Mysteries and a long succession of Roman
emperors also received initiation, though of a peculiar kind.
Furthermore, everything connected with the ancient pagan
cults still survived. But these facts are usually dismissed
today in a few words by contemporary historians. The events
of that early period are portrayed in a very superficial
manner; but this superficial portrayal may provide a
sufficient justification in the eyes of many for speaking of
a second Mystery of Golgotha. But people have not the
slightest understanding of the inner meaning of those
events.

From an
external point of view one can say that in the early
Christian centuries pagan temples, with their statues of a
splendour and magnificence which are inconceivable today,
were scattered over wide areas. These images (of the gods),
even into their formalistic details, were a symbolic
representation of all that had lived in the ancient
Mysteries. Not only was there not a town or locality without
abundant representations of symbolic art forms, but in the
fields where peasants cultivated their crops were to be found
isolated shrines, each with its statue of a God. And they
never undertook agricultural work without first putting
themselves in touch with those forces which, they believed,
streamed down from the universe through the agency of the
magic powers which resided in these images. The Roman
emperors, with the support of bishops and priests, were
concerned to destroy utterly these temples and shrines
together with their images. We can follow this work of
iconoclasm up to the time of the emperor Justinian in the
sixth century. Countless edicts were promulgated ordering the
ruthless destruction of these temples and shrines. During
these centuries a wave of iconoclasm swept over the world
that was unprecedented in the history of mankind; unprecedented
because of the extent of the systematic destruction
(note 2).
Up to the time when
St. Benedict with his own hands and the support of his
workmen levelled the temple of Apollo on Monte Cassino in
order to found a monastery dedicated to the service of the
Benedictine Order on this site, and up to the time of the
emperor Justinian, it was one of the foremost duties of the
Roman emperors (who since Constantine had been converted to
Christianity) to eradicate all traces of paganism. Edicts
were promulgated whose apparent purpose was to arrest this
work of destruction, but in reading them one receives a
strange impression. One emperor, for example, issued an edict
declaring that all the pagan temples should not be destroyed
immediately for fear of inflaming the populace; the work of
destruction should rather be carried out gradually, for the
people would then accept it without demur.

All the
terrible measures associated with this work of destruction
are very often glossed over like so many other things. But
this is a mistake. Whenever truth is in any way obscured, the
path leading to Christ Jesus is also obscured and cannot be
found. Since I have already spoken of this earnest love of
truth, allow me to refer to a small incident which occurred
in my early childhood and which I shall never forget. Such
things are most revealing. Unless we wilfully blind ourselves
we learn from the history of the Roman emperors that
Constantine was not precisely a model of virtue, otherwise he
would not have accused his own stepson, without any
justification, of illicit relations with his own mother. The
accusation was a pure fabrication in order to find a pretext
for murder. Constantine first had his stepson murdered on
this trumped-up charge and then the stepmother. These were
simply routine acts with Constantine. Since however the
Church was deeply indebted to him, official Church history is
ashamed to portray him in his true colours. With your
permission I should like to read a passage from my school
text-book on the history of religion which refers to
Constantine: “Constantine showed himself to be a true
son of the Church even in his private life” — and
I have already given you an example of this! “Though
often reproached for his irascibility and ambition one must
remember that faith is not a guarantee against every moral
lapse and that Christianity could not manifest its redemptive
power in him because, to the end of his life, he never
partook of the Sacrament.” Now examples of this kind of
whitewash are a commonplace. They demonstrate how seldom
history displays a love of truth. And much the same applies
to recent history. Here we find other distortions but we fail
to detect them because other interests occupy our
attention.

When we read
the account of these Imperial edicts (relating to the
destruction of the pagan temples) we are also informed that
the Roman emperors expressly rejected animal sacrifice and
similar practices which are alleged to have taken place in
the temples. Now I do not intend to criticize or to gloss
over anything, but simply to state the facts. But we must
remember that “opposition to animal sacrifice”
(from the entrails of which future events are said to have
been predicted) was, in fact, a decadent form of sacrifice.
It was not the trifling matter that history often suggests,
but a profound science, different in character from that of
today. The object of animal sacrifice — and it is
difficult to speak of these practices today because we find
them so revolting that we can only refer to them in general
terms — was to stimulate powers which, at the time,
could not be attained directly because the epoch of the old
clairvoyance was past. Attempts were made within certain
circles of the pagan priesthood to revive the old clairvoyant
powers. This was one of the methods employed. A more
satisfactory method of awakening this ancient atavistic
clairvoyance in order to recapture the spirit of primeval
times was to revive the particular form of sacrifice
practised in the Mithras Mysteries and in the most spiritual
form known to the Mysteries at that time. In the priestly
Mysteries of Egypt and in Egyptian temples far more brutal
and bloodthirsty practices were carried out. When we study
the Mithras Mysteries by occult means we realize that they
were a means to gain insight into the secrets of the forces
operating in the universe through sacrificial rites that were
totally different in character from what we understand by
sacrificial rites today; in fact they yielded a far deeper
insight into the secrets of nature than the modern practice
of autopsy which only leads to a superficial knowledge. Those
who performed these sacrificial rites in the correct way were
able to perceive clairvoyantly certain forces which are
present in the hidden depths of nature. And for this reason
the real motives for these ritual sacrifices were kept secret
and only those who were adequately prepared were permitted to
have knowledge of them.

Now when we
look into the origin of the Mithras Mysteries we find that
they date back to the Third post-Atlantean epoch and so they
were already decadent at the time of which we are speaking.
In their purer form they were suited to the Third
post-Atlantean epoch only. They had reached their high point
in this epoch. Through the performance of particular rites
they had the power, albeit in a mysterious and somewhat
dangerous way, to penetrate deeply into the secrets of
nature. The priest performed certain rites in the presence of
the neophyte by which he was enabled to
“decompound” natural substances (i.e. to resolve
them into their constituent parts) in order thereby to arrive
at an understanding of the processes of nature. Through the
manner in which the fire and water in the organisms
interacted on each other and through the manner in which they
reacted upon the neophyte who took part in the sacrifice, a
special path was opened up which enabled him to attain to a
self-knowledge that reached down into the very fibres of his
being and thereby arrive at an understanding of the
universe.

By
participating in these sacrificial rites man learned to see
himself in a new light. But this knowledge made considerable
allowance for man's weakness. Self-knowledge is
extremely difficult to acquire, and these sacrificial rites
were intended to facilitate such knowledge and enabled him to
feel and experience his inner life more intensely than
through intellectual or conceptual processes. He therefore
strove for a self-knowledge that penetrated into his physical
organism, a self-knowledge that can be seen in the souls of
the great artists of antiquity, who, to a certain extent,
owed their sense of form to an instinctive feeling for the
forms and movements of nature which they experienced in their
own organism. As we look back into the history of art, we
find there was a time when the artist never dreamt of working
from models; any suggestion of working from the model would
have been unthinkable. We become increasingly aware that the
artist portrayed his visual imaginations in concrete form.
Visual imagination is virtually a thing of the past; we
hardly dare mention it because words are inadequate to give
any real indication of what we mean by it. It is incredible
how much times have changed.

Now the
Eleusinian Mysteries were a direct continuation of the
Mithras Mysteries which were widely diffused at the time of
the Mystery of Golgotha, but at the same time they
represented a totally different aspect. Whilst the Mithras
Mysteries emphasized the attainment of self-knowledge through
the physical organism, the Eleusinian Mysteries were quite
different from those of the Mithras Mysteries. In the latter
the neophyte was thrust deeply into himself; in the
Eleusinian Mysteries his soul was liberated from the body so
that he could experience outside the body the hidden impulses
of the creative activity of nature and the spirit. Now if we
ask what man learned from these Mysteries — from the
Mithras Mysteries which were already decadent and from the
Eleusinian Mysteries that had reached their high point
towards the
fourth century B.C.
— if we ask what
benefit man derived from these Mysteries, then the answer is
found in the well-known injunction of the Delphic oracle:
“Know thyself”. Initiation was directed to the
attainment of self-knowledge along two different paths:
first, self-knowledge through being thrust inwards so that
the astral and etheric bodies were “condensed”,
so to speak, and through the impact of the psychic on the
physical, man realized: “Now you perceive yourself for
what you are; you have attained self-awareness.” Such
was the legacy of the Mithras Mysteries. In the Eleusinian
Mysteries, on the other hand, he attained to self-knowledge
through the liberation of the soul from the body by means of
various rites which cannot be described in detail here. The
soul thus came in contact with the secret power of the Sun,
with solar impulses irradiating the Earth, with the forces of
the Moon impulse streaming into the Earth, with the forces of
stellar impulses and the impulses of the individual elemental
forces — the warmth, air and fire forces and so on. The
external elements streamed through man's soul (which
had been withdrawn from the body) and in this encounter with
the external forces he attained self-knowledge. Those who
were aware of the real meaning of the Mystery teachings knew
that man could attain to all kinds of psychic experiences
outside the body, but he was unable to grasp concretely the
idea of the ego. Outside the Mysteries the idea of the ego
was a purely abstract concept at that time. Man could
experience other aspects of the psychic and spiritual life,
but the ego had to be nurtured through Mystery training and
needed a powerful stimulus. This was the aim of the Mysteries
and was known to the initiates.

Now as you
know, there occurred at this time a kind of fusion between
evolving Christianity and the Roman empire. I have already
described how this arose and how, because of this fusion, the
Church was anxious to suppress, as far as possible, those
rites I have just described to you, to efface all traces of
the past and to conceal from posterity all knowledge of the
Mystery practices which over the centuries had sought to
bring man, whether in the body or outside the body, in touch
with those spiritual forces which help him to develop his ego
consciousness. If we wish to make a more detailed study of
the evolution of Christianity we must consider not only the
development of dogma, but especially the development of
ancient cults from certain points of view; this is of far
greater importance than the evolution of dogma. For dogmas
are a source of controversy and like the phoenix they rise
again from their own ashes. However much we may imagine they
have been eradicated, there is always some crank who comes
along and revives the old prejudices. Cults are far easier to
eradicate. And these ancient cults which, in a certain sense,
were the external signs and symbols of Mystery practices were
suppressed, so that it would be impossible to discover from
the survival of ancient rites the methods by which man sought
to come in touch with divine-spiritual forces.

In order to
get to the bottom of the matter we must take a look at the
chief sacrament of the Church of Rome, the sacrifice of the
Mass. What is the inner significance of the Catholic Mass? In
reality, the Mass and all that is related to it, is a
continuation and development of the Mithras Mysteries,
blended to some extent with the Eleusinian Mysteries. The
sacrifice of the Mass and many of the related ceremonies is
simply a further development of the ancient cults. The
original ritual has been somewhat transformed; the sanguinary
character which the Mithras Mysteries had assumed has been
modified. But we cannot fail to note many similarities in the
spirit of these two cults, especially if we appreciate
certain details. For example, before receiving the Host the
priest as well as the communicant must fast for a certain
period. This detail is more important for the understanding
of the Mystery in question than many of the issues that were
so fiercely debated in the Middle Ages. And if the priest, as
may well happen, neglects the order to fast before
celebrating the Eucharist, then the Communion loses its
meaning and the effect it should have. Indeed its efficacy is
largely lost because the communicants have not been properly
instructed. It can be effective only if suitable instruction
has been given to the communicant on what he should
experience immediately after receiving the “unbloody
sacrifice (sic) of His Body and Blood”. But you are no
doubt aware of how little attention is paid to these
subtleties nowadays, how little people realize that communion
must be followed by an inward experience, that one should
experience an inner intimation, a kind of modern renewal of
that stimulation which the neophyte experienced in the
Mithras Mysteries. This is what really lies behind the
Christian cult. And ordination was an attempt by the Church
to establish a kind of continuation of the ancient principle
of Initiation. But she forgot in many cases that Initiation
consisted in giving instruction in the way to respond to
certain experiences.

Now
Julian's avowed object was to discover how the
Eleusinian Mysteries into which he had been initiated were
related to the Mysteries of the Third post-Atlantean epoch.
What could he learn from these Mysteries? On this subject
history tells us little. If we were to embark upon a serious
study of how men such as Clement of Alexandria, his pupil
Origen, Tertullian and even Irenaeus
(note 3),
to say nothing of the still earlier
Fathers, derive in part from the pagan principle of
initiation and came to Christianity in their own way, if we
were to enter into the minds of these great souls, we should
find that their concepts and ideas were informed by an inner
vitality peculiar to them alone, that an entirely different
spirit dwelt in them from that which was later reflected in
the Church. If we wish to understand the Mystery of Golgotha
we must catch something of the spirit of these early
Fathers.

Now in
relation to the great cultural manifestations men are fast
asleep, and I mean this literally. They see the world as if
in a dream and we can observe this at the present time. I
have often spoken to you of Herman Grimm
(note 4),
and I must confess that when I speak of him
today I am a different person from the person who spoke of
him some four or five years ago. After nearly three years of
War the decades before the War and the years immediately
preceding the War seem like a golden age. All that has
happened in those years seems centuries ago. Things have
changed so much that one has the feeling that time has been
infinitely prolonged. And in like manner the most important
things pass unnoticed because mankind is asleep to them.

If today we
try to grasp the ideas of ancient writers with the ordinary
method of understanding — conventional academic
teachers of course understand everything that has been
transmitted to posterity — but if one is not one of
these enlightened mortals, one may come to the conclusion
that it is impossible to understand ancient Greek
philosophers unless one has recourse to occult knowledge.
They speak a different language; the language in which they
communicate their ideas is different from that of normal
communication. And this applies to Plato. Hebbel
(note 5)
was aware of this and in his diary he
sketched the outline of a dramatic composition which depicted
the reincarnated Plato as a Grammar School pupil who had read
Plato with his master, but was unable to cope with Plato
although he himself was the reincarnation of the philosopher.
Hebbel wanted to dramatize this idea but never carried it
out. Hebbel, therefore, felt that even Plato could not
readily be understood; one needed further preparation.
Understanding in the sense of the accurate grasping of ideas
first began with Aristotle in the
fourth century B.C.
Philosophy before Aristotle is incomprehensible by normal
human standards. This explains the many commentaries on
Aristotle for, whilst on the one hand he is perfectly
intelligible, on the other hand in the formation of certain
concepts we have not advanced beyond Aristotle because in
this respect he belongs to his age. It is impossible to adopt
the thought-forms of another epoch; that is tantamount to
asking a man of fifty-six to become twenty-six again in order
to relive for a quarter of an hour his experiences as a man
of twenty-six. A certain mode of thinking is only valid for a
particular epoch and the peculiarity attaching to the
thinking of a particular epoch is merely repeated time and
time again. It is interesting to note how Aristotle dominated
the thinking of the Middle Ages and how his philosophy was
revived again by Franz Brentano
(note 6)
and precisely at this moment of time. In 1911 Brentano wrote
an excellent book on Aristotle in which he elaborated those
ideas and concepts that he wished to bring to the attention
of our present epoch. It is a curious symptom of the Karma of
our age that Brentano should have written at this precise
moment of time a comprehensive study of Aristotle which
should be read by all who value a certain kind of thinking.
And let me add in addition that the book is eminently
readable.

Now it was
the fate of Aristotle's writings to have been
mutilated, not by Christianity, but by the Church (though not
directly), so that essential parts of his work are missing.
Consequently these lacunae must be supplemented by occult
means. The most important omissions refer to the human soul.
And, in connection with Aristotle, I now come to the question
posed by all today: how can I find, by means of inner
soul-experiences, a sure way to open myself to the Mystery of
Golgotha? How can I direct towards this end the practice of
meditation described in my writings,
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
and elsewhere. To a certain extent
Aristotle attempted on his own initiative to awaken within
himself the inner experiences which those who pose this
question must attempt to undertake. But, according to the
commentators, whenever Aristotle is on the point of
describing his method of meditation, he breaks off and is
silent. It is not that he did not describe his technique, but
that the later transcripts failed to record it, so that it
was never transmitted to posterity. Aristotle had already
embarked upon a specific path, the path of mysticism. He
strove to find within his soul that which gives certainty of
the soul's immortality.

Now if a man
honestly and sincerely practises meditation for a time he
will unquestionably attain the inner experience of the
immortality of the soul because he opens the doors to the
immortal within him. Aristotle never doubted for a moment
that it is possible to experience within ourselves something
which proclaims: I now feel something within me that is
independent of the body and which is unrelated to the death
of the body. But he goes even further. He strove to develop
this deep inner experience which we know (when we become
conscious of it) is connected with the body. He experienced
quite definitely — but the passage has been mutilated
or bowdlerized — that inner solitude which must be felt
by all who wish to arrive at an understanding of the Mystery
of Golgotha. Mystical experience inevitably leads to
solitude. And when this feeling of solitude overwhelms us we
ask: “What have I forsaken that I have become so
lonely?”, we shall be obliged to answer: “I have
forsaken father, mother, brothers, sisters, I have forsworn
the vanities of the world. I am emotionally detached from
them.” Aristotle was aware of this. This inner
experience can be felt by everyone, it can be systematically
developed. In this feeling of solitude we come to realize
that we have something within us that transcends death,
something that pertains to the ego alone and is unrelated to
the external world. Aristotle, too, realized that our contact
with the external world is mediated through the physical
organs. It is possible for man to experience himself in other
ways, but the organs of the body are indispensable in order
to experience the external world. Hence the feeling of
solitude that overtakes us. And Aristotle realized, as
everyone who follows in his steps must realize, that he had
experienced his immortal soul which death cannot destroy. He
was no longer attached to the finite and transient. “I
am henceforth alone with myself” he said, “but my
idea of immortality is limited; I realize that after death I
shall know utter solitude, that through all eternity I shall
be faced with the good and evil deeds that I have perpetrated
in life and these will always be before my eyes, and this is
all I can attain by my own efforts. If I wish to gain a
deeper insight into the spiritual world I cannot rely on my
own efforts alone; either I must receive Initiation or be
instructed by Initiates.”

All this
could be found in Aristotle's writings, but his
successors were forbidden to transmit the knowledge. And
because Aristotle anticipated this possibility he was
regarded to a certain extent as a kind of prophet; he became
the prophet of that which was not possible in his day, and
which is different today from what it was in
Aristotle's time. There is no need to appeal to
history; we know from personal experience that times have
changed.

Now let us
turn our attention once again to this feeling of total
solitude which assails us today, to this mystical experience
which is completely different from the mystical experiences
usually described. People often speak of them complacently
and say: “God is experienced within myself.” That
is not, however, the full mystical experience. In full
mystical experience we experience God in total and utter
solitude. Alone in the presence of God man experiences
himself. And then he must find the necessary strength and
perseverance to continue in this state of isolation. For this
experience of solitude is a potent force! If we do not allow
ourselves to be oppressed by solitude, but allow it to become
an active force in us, then we meet with a further experience
— these things of course can only be described, but
everyone can experience them — we have the firm
conviction that the solitude we suffer is self-created, that
we have brought it upon ourselves. We create our gods in our
own image. This solitude is not born with us, it is created
by us, we ourselves are responsible for it. This is the
second experience.

And this
second experience leads to the feeling that we share direct
responsibility for the death of that which is born of God.
When man has suffered the dark night of the soul for a
sufficient length of time the divine element in him has been
slain by the all-too-human. This has not always been the
case, otherwise evolution would have been impossible. There
must have been a time when this feeling did not exist. At
this moment man begins to feel that he shares responsibility
for the death of the divine within him. If time permitted I
could explain more fully the meaning of the slaying of the
“Son of God”. Remember that mystical experience
is not a vague, indefinite, isolated experience; it unfolds
progressively; we ourselves experience the death of the
Christ.

And when this
experience has become a powerful force in us, then (I can
express it in no other way) the Christ, the Risen Lord is
born in us. For the Risen Lord, He who has suffered death, is
first felt as an inner mystical experience and the reason for
His death is experienced in the manner already described.

There are
three degrees of mystical experience. To find the path
leading to the sources of the Mystery of Golgotha is of
itself not enough; something more must be added, something
that has been grotesquely misrepresented, even concealed, at
the present time. The only person who forcefully pointed out
what had been concealed from mankind by the nineteenth
century was Friedrich Nietzsche in his book
On the Uses and Abuses of History.
Nothing is more calculated to
destroy our understanding of Christ than what is called
history today. And the Mystery of Golgotha has never been
more thoroughly misrepresented than by the objective
historians of the nineteenth century. I am aware that anyone
who criticizes the objective history of today is regarded as
a fool. I have no wish to denigrate the painstaking
philological and scholarly achievements of historical
research, but however scholarly or however exact this history
may be, it is a spiritual desert. It has no understanding of
the things that are of vital importance to the life of man
and to mankind as a whole. They are a closed book to modern
history.

Perhaps I may
be permitted to speak from personal experience in this field,
for these things have personal associations. Since my
nineteenth year I have been continually occupied with the
study of Goethe but I have never been tempted to write a
factual history of his life or even portray him in the
academic sense, for the simple reason that from the very
first I felt that what mattered most was that Goethe was
still a living force. The physical man Goethe who was born in
1749 and died in 1832, is not important; what is important is
that after his death his spirit is still alive amongst us
today, not only in the Goethe literature (which is not
particularly enlightened), but in the very air we
breathe.

This
spiritual atmosphere that surrounds us today did not as yet
exist in the men of antiquity. The etheric body, as you know,
is separated from the soul after death as a kind of second
corpse, but, through the Christ Impulse that informs us since
the Mystery of Golgotha, the etheric body is now preserved to
some extent; it is not completely dissolved. If we believe
— and I use the word belief in the sense which I
defined in an earlier lecture — that Goethe is
“risen” in an etheric body and if we begin to
meditate upon him, then his concepts and ideas become alive
in us, and we describe him not as he was, but as he is
today. The idea of resurrection has then become a living
reality and we believe in the resurrection. We can then say
that we believe not only in ideas that belong to the past,
but also in the living continuity of ideas. This is connected
with a profound mystery of modern times. No matter what we
may think, so long as we are imprisoned in the physical body
our thoughts cannot manifest in the right way. (This does not
apply to our feeling and will, but only to our thoughts and
representations.) Great as Goethe was, his ideas were greater
than he. That they were unable to rise to greater heights was
due to the limitations of his physical body. The moment they
were liberated from these limitations of the body and could
be developed by someone who has sympathy and understanding
for them, they are transformed and acquire new life. (I am
referring here to the thoughts which persist to some extent
in his etheric body, not to his feeling and will.) Remember
that the form in which ideas first arise in us is not their
final form. Believe therefore in the resurrection of ideas!
Believe this so firmly that you willingly seek union with
your forefathers — not with your forefathers to whom
you are linked through ties of blood, but with your spiritual
forefathers — and that you will ultimately find them.
They need not be Goethes, they might equally well be a Smith
or a Brown. Try to fulfil the injunction of Christ: do not
cling to ties of consanguinity, but seek rather a spiritual
relationship. Then the thought of resurrection becomes a
living reality in your life and you will believe in
resurrection. It is not a question of invoking incessantly
the name of the Lord; what matters is that we grasp the
living spirit of Christianity, that we hold fast to the
vitally important idea of resurrection as a living force. And
he who in this way draws support for his inner life from the
past, learns that the past lives on in us, we experience in
ourselves the continuity of the past. And then — it is
only a question of time — the moment arrives when we
are aware of the presence of the Christ. Everything depends
upon our firm faith in the Risen Christ and in the idea of
resurrection, so that we can now say: “We are
surrounded by a world of spirit and the resurrection has
become a reality within us.”

You may
object, however, that this is pure hypothesis. So be it. Once
you have had the experience of having been in touch with the
thoughts of someone who has died, whose physical body has
been committed to the Earth and whose thoughts live on in
you, then a time comes when you say: “The thoughts that
have newly arisen in me I owe to Christ; they could never
have become so vitally alive but for the incarnation of
Christ.”

There is an
inward path to the Mystery of Golgotha; but one must first
abandon so-called “objective” history which in
reality is entirely subjective because it deals with surface
phenomena and ignores the spirit. Many Goethe biographies
have been written which set out to portray Goethe's
life with maximum fidelity. In every case the authors, of
necessity, stifle something in themselves. For Goethe's
way of thinking has been transformed and lives on in a
different form. It is important that we should grasp
Christianity in the same spirit.

In short, it
is possible to have a mystical experience of the Mystery of
Golgotha — mystical in the true sense of the word. One
must not be content with abstractions, one must be prepared
to suffer through the inner experiences I have already
described. And if the question is raised: how can I draw near
to Christ? (it must be understood that we are referring to
the Risen Christ), if we have the patience and necessary
perseverance to follow the path indicated, we can be sure of
finding the Christ at the right moment. But when we find Him,
we must be careful not to overlook what is most
important.

I said in an
earlier lecture that Aristotle was a prophet and that Julian
the Apostate inherited something of the same prophetic gift.
Owing to the form which the Eleusinian Mysteries had assumed
at that time, he could not discover their true meaning; he
hoped to find the answer in the Mithras Mysteries. It was for
this reason that Julian embarked on his Persian campaign. He
wished to discover the continuity in the Mystery teachings,
to find the connection between them. And because this was not
permitted he was assassinated.

Now the early
Church Fathers sought to experience the Christ after the
fashion of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Whether we call them
Gnostics or not — the true Gnostics were rejected by
the Church, though Clement of Alexandria could justifiably be
called a Gnostic — they had a totally different
relation to Christ than later times. They sought to approach
Him through the Eleusinian Mysteries and accepted Him as a
Cosmic Being. They repeatedly raised the question: How does
the Logos operate purely in the spiritual world? What is the
true nature of the Being whom man encounters in Paradise?
What is his relation to the Logos? Such were the questions
which occupied the minds of the Gnostics’, questions
that can only be answered by those who are familiar with the
world of spiritual ideas. When we study the Eleusinian
Mysteries (that were extirpated root and branch), it is
evident that in the first centuries after the Mystery of
Golgotha the Risen Christ was Himself present in the
Mysteries in order to reform them. And we can truly say that
Julian the Apostate had a deeper understanding of
Christianity than Constantine. In the first place,
Constantine had not been initiated and had only accepted
Christianity in a superficial way. But Julian felt
intuitively that Christ could only be found in the Mysteries.
It was through Initiation that we must find the Christ; He
would endow us with the ego which could not be granted us at
that time because we were not ready to receive it.

It was a
historical necessity that these Mysteries should be destroyed
because they did not lead to the Christ. We today must find
access to Hellenism once again, but without the aid of
documents. Hellenism must be revived, not of course in its
original form, otherwise it becomes the travesty that can be
seen in the aping of the Olympiad, for example. It is not a
question of aping Hellenism; I am not suggesting any such
thing. Hellenism must be renewed from within and
unquestionably will be renewed. We must find the path to the
Mysteries once again, but within ourselves, and then we shall
also find the path to the Christ.

Just as
Christ was crucified for the first time on Golgotha, so He
was crucified a second time through Constantinism. By
suppressing the Mysteries, Christ, as a historical reality,
was crucified a second time. For those acts of vandalism
which lasted for centuries destroyed not only priceless
treasures of art, but destroyed also man's experience
of the spiritual world, the most important experience he
could have. People had no understanding of what had been
destroyed by this vandalism, because they had lost all sense
of values. When the temples of Jupiter and Serapis were
demolished together with their statues the mob applauded.
“It is right to destroy them,” they said,
“for it has been foretold that when the temple of
Serapis is destroyed, then the Heavens will fall and the
Earth will be plunged in chaos. The Heavens however have not
fallen, nor has the world collapsed in chaos despite the fact
that the Roman Christians have levelled the temple to the
ground.” It is true that outwardly the stars have not
fallen, nor has the Earth been plunged in chaos. But all that
man had formerly known through the experience of the Sun
initiation was extinguished. That majestic wisdom, more
grandiose than the firmament of ancient astronomy, collapsed
along with the ruins of the temple of Serapis. And this
ancient wisdom, the last traces of which Julian still found
in the Mysteries of Eleusis, where the spiritual Sun and the
spiritual Moon had been revealed to him, this wisdom was lost
forever. All that the men of ancient times experienced in the
Mithras Mysteries and Egyptian Mysteries when, through
sacrificial worship, they relived inwardly the mysteries of
the Moon and the Earth as they are enacted in man himself
when he came to self-knowledge through the “inner
compression” of his soul — all this has collapsed
in chaos. Spiritually, however, the Heavens had fallen and
the Earth was plunged in chaos; for what was lost in the
course of those centuries is comparable to the loss that we
should suffer if we were suddenly bereft of our senses, when
we would know neither the Heavens above nor the Earth beneath
our feet. The loss of the ancient world is not the trivial
episode recorded in history, but has far deeper implications.
We must believe in the resurrection even if we are unwilling
to believe that what has disappeared is lost for ever. This
demands that we should be resolute in thought and have the
courage of our convictions. We realize the imperative need
today for the Christ Impulse to which I have so often
referred in these lectures.

Through
karmic necessity (a necessity from a certain standpoint only)
man has for centuries been destined to live a life that was
empty and purposeless, to live in a spiritual vacuum, so that
through a strong inner urge for freedom he could find the
Christ again and in the right way. But he must first rid
himself of that self-complacency from which he so often
suffers at the present time.

Sometimes
this self-complacency assumes most remarkable forms. In the
eighties, a Benedictine father, Knauer, gave a course of
lectures in Vienna on the Stoics. I should like to read you a
passage from one of these lectures. The leading
representatives of the Stoic school of philosophy were
Zeno (342-270),
Cleanthes (331-232) and
Chrysippus (282-209);
the school therefore flourished several centuries before the
Mystery of Golgotha. This is what Knauer says:

“In
conclusion I should like to say in defence of the Stoics
that they strove for a league of nations, embracing the
whole of mankind, which would end war and racial hatred. I
need hardly say that in this respect the Stoics rose
superior to the often inhuman prejudices of their time
— and even of later generations.”

A league of
nations! I had to read the lecture again. Could it be that my
ears had deceived me when I heard Woodrow Wilson and other
statesmen talking of a league of nations? For here was the
voice of the Stoics, but they said it far better because they
had the power of the Mysteries behind them. The inner power
which inspired their discourses is now lost, leaving but the
shell behind. Only those historians who stand a little apart
from the normal species of historian can sometimes see
historical events in a new and different light.

And Knauer
continued — I withdraw nothing of what I said recently
about Immanuel Kant; but it is none the less remarkable that
a capable philosopher such as Knauer should have said the
following about the Stoa in the eighties:

“Amongst the more recent philosophers” — he
is referring to the league of nations idea of the Stoa
— “no less a person than Kant has revived this
idea and declared it to be a feasible proposition in his
treatise ‘On Perpetual Peace. A philosophical
outline’, a work that has not received the recognition
it deserves. The fundamental idea of Kant is both sound and
practicable. He shows that eternal peace must become a
reality when the ‘Great Powers’ introduce a
genuinely representative system.” In Kant this idea is
considerably emasculated, but today it has been still more
emasculated so that it is a shadow of its former self. And
this nebulous conception is now graced with the name
“the new orientation”. And Knauer continues:
“Under such a system the wealthy and propertied classes
and the professional classes who are the chief victims of war
will have the right to decide issues of war and peace. Our
constitutions which are modelled on that of England are not
genuine representative systems in Kant's opinion. They
are dominated by party prejudice and sectional interests
which are promoted by an electoral system that is based for
the most part on statistical calculations and the counting of
heads. The crux of Kant's argument is this:
international law must be based upon a federation of
independent States which have wide powers of
autonomy.”

Is this the
voice of Kant or the voice of the “new
orientation”? Kant argues his case more vigorously, it
is more firmly grounded. I do not propose to read you what
follows, otherwise the worthy Kant would incur the
displeasure of the censor.

What I have
been discussing was the subject of a book by the American
author Brook Adams
(note 7),
The Law of Civilisation and Decay,
a study of the importance of
evolutionary theory in human history. Brook Adams tried to
account for the continual revival of old institutions and
forms of life by certain peoples, for example, the revival of
the Roman empire by the Teutonic peoples. Surveying the
present epoch he finds many nations who have affinity with
the Roman empire, but no indications of the peoples who will
renew it — certainly not the American people, and in
this he was perfectly right. This regenerative power will not
come from without; it must come from within through the
quickening of the spirit. It must spring from the soul and
will only be possible when we grasp the Christ Impulse in all
its living power. All these empty phrases one hears on every
hand apply to the past and not to the present or future. All
this empty talk with its everlasting refrain: “Yes, the
old proverb is true: ‘Minerva's owl can only
spread her wings in the twilight’ was valid for ancient
times.” And to this we reply: “When nations had
grown old they established schools of philosophy; they looked
back in spirit to what they owed to instinct. Things will be
different in the future, for this instinct will no longer
exist. The spirit itself must become instinct and from out of
the spirit new creative possibilities must arise.”

Reflect upon
these words for they are of momentous importance: out of the
spirit new creative possibilities will arise! The power of
the spirit must work unconsciously within you. And this
depends upon the idea of resurrection. That which has been
crucified must arise again. This will not come to pass by
passively waiting on events, but by quickening the spiritual
forces within us, by quickening the creative power of the
spirit itself.

This is what
I wished to say on the subject of the Mystery of Golgotha at
this particular juncture of time.

NOTES BY
TRANSLATOR

Note 1.
Clement of Alexandria (301–232 B.C.)
was head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, a training school
for catechumens. In the conflict between pistis (faith) and
gnosis (knowledge) he favoured the latter and was close to
the Gnostics in that he supported Platonism and the
allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. He believed
in the idea of the “Disciplina Arcani”, the
withholding of higher knowledge from those unfitted to
receive it, which was common to all ancient Mystery
teaching. Origen
(A.D. 186–253)
became head of the
Catechetical School. Nurtured in neo-Platonism through the
influence of Ammonius Saccus. Adjudged to be a heretic by
the fifth Ecumenical Council. He accepted the theory of
pre-existence, free will and the necessity of grace. He
also used symbol and allegory in his exegesis. He wrote
commentaries on nearly every work in scripture. His
crowning work was Contra Celsum who attacked Christianity
on moral and intellectual grounds. Book VI of Eusebius
Ecclestical History
is devoted to him. See also
Appendix I in the perceptive commentary of A. P. Shepherd
and Mildred Robertson Nicoll, in
The Redemption of Thinking
(Hodder & Stoughton).

Note 2.
The systematic destruction of pagan temples began under
Constantine. Out of expediency the emperors remained
neutral in the conflict between Christian and pagan cults.
But the Christian monks not only incited the populace to
pillage, but were themselves the first to burn and pillage
the temples and to ransack trophies, statues and anything
of value. It was during the outburst of iconoclasm that the
famous library in the temple of Serapis was destroyed in
A.D. 391.

Note 3.
Irenaeus, born in Asia, heard St. Polycarp in his youth.
The date of his death is unknown. His chief work was
Adversus Haereses,
c.179, an attack upon the Gnostics and the principal heresies.

Note 4.
Herman Grimm (1828–1901), son of Wilhelm Grimm who
with his brother Jacob collected and edited the
Nursery and Household Tales.
Herman was an art historian who wrote works on Goethe, Dante,
Shakespeare, Raphael and Michelangelo.

Note 5.
Hebbel (1813–63), poet and dramatist. Tragedy,
according to Hebbel arises out of conflict. Innovators,
leaders of new movements, men of original mind,
representatives of new principles, though they may lead to
the amelioration of society, are doomed to destruction.
This was the tragedy of Christ. The first and last
representative of a movement, he declared, is either tragic
or comic.

Note 6.
Franz Brentano (1838–1917). An Austrian philosopher,
ordained 1864, but was unable to accept the doctrine of
papal infallibility and relinquished his clerical status.
Professor of Philosophy in Wurzburg 1872 and taught at the
University of Vienna 1874–95.
Aristoteles and seine Weltanschauung
(1911) was a re-assessment of
Aristotelian philosophy. Brentano attempted to revise
Aristotle's logic and psychology from the standpoint
of empiricism. Brentano believed in the existence of a
personal and immortal soul. (See D. Kraus, Franz Brentano,
1919, and H. O. Eaton, The Austrian Philosophy of Values,
1930.)

Note 7.
Brooks Adams (1848–1927), also wrote
The Dream and the Reality,
1917. Predicted that by the mid-twentieth century the two great
Powers in the world would be America and Russia. American
prosperity would contribute to the decay of American
democracy because great wealth exercises power without
responsibility.